Posts Tagged ‘Arizona’

The stealthy F-35 fighter jets made by Lockheed Martin Corp were temporarily grounded at a U.S. Air Force base in Arizona on Friday because of irregularities in pilots’ oxygen supplies, an Air Force spokesman said.

Training flights were scheduled to resume on Monday after a day of safety briefings at the base on Friday, a base spokeswoman said.

Lockheed Martin plans to demonstrate the advanced jet at the Paris Air Show this month.

At Luke Air Force Base northwest of Phoenix, Arizona, the 56th Fighter Wing canceled local flying operations for its F-35A Lightning II aircraft due to five incidents in which pilots experienced symptoms resembling hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation, according to the Air Force spokesman, Captain Mark Graff at the Pentagon.

The Air Force said the incidents occurred from May 2 to Thursday, and that in each case the aircraft’s backup oxygen system worked as designed and the jets were able to land safely. The base typically has 25 training flights each weekday, the base spokeswoman said.

The Pentagon said that it was conducting a comprehensive review of the facts and circumstances surrounding physiological episodes along with industry experts.

A Lockheed representative said the company would help the Air Force address the issue.

The F-35 business accounted for about 37 percent of Lockheed’s total revenue during the last fiscal quarter, which ended on March 30.

The Trump administration is considering a proposal to mobilize as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up unauthorized immigrants, including millions living nowhere near the Mexico border, according to a draft memo obtained by The Associated Press.

The 11-page document calls for the unprecedented militarization of immigration enforcement as far north as Portland, Oregon, and as far east as New Orleans, Louisiana.

Four states that border on Mexico are included in the proposal — California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas — but it also encompasses seven states contiguous to those four — Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the AP report was “100 percent not sure” and “irresponsible.” ”There is no effort at all to utilize the National Guard to round up unauthorized immigrants,” he said.

Governors in the 11 states would have a choice whether to have their guard troops participate, according to the memo, written by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general.

While National Guard personnel have been used to assist with immigration-related missions on the U.S.-Mexico border before, they have never been used as broadly or as far north.

The memo is addressed to the then-acting heads of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. It would serve as guidance to implement the wide-ranging executive order on immigration and border security that President Donald Trump signed Jan. 25. Such memos are routinely issued to supplement executive orders.

Also dated Jan. 25, the draft memo says participating troops would be authorized “to perform the functions of an immigration officer in relation to the investigation, apprehension and detention of aliens in the United States.” It describes how the troops would be activated under a revived state-federal partnership program, and states that personnel would be authorized to conduct searches and identify and arrest any unauthorized immigrants.

Requests to the White House and the Department of Homeland Security for comment and a status report on the proposal were not answered.

The draft document has circulated among DHS staff over the last two weeks. As recently as Friday, staffers in several different offices reported discussions were underway.

If implemented, the impact could be significant. Nearly one-half of the 11.1 million people residing in the U.S. without authorization live in the 11 states, according to Pew Research Center estimates based on 2014 Census data.

Use of National Guard troops would greatly increase the number of immigrants targeted in one of Trump’s executive orders last month, which expanded the definition of who could be considered a criminal and therefore a potential target for deportation. That order also allows immigration agents to prioritize removing anyone who has “committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense.”

Under current rules, even if the proposal is implemented, there would not be immediate mass deportations. Those with existing deportation orders could be sent back to their countries of origin without additional court proceedings. But deportation orders generally would be needed for most other unauthorized immigrants.

The troops would not be nationalized, remaining under state control.

Spokespeople for the governors of Arizona, Utah, Nevada, California, Colorado, Oklahoma, Oregon and New Mexico said they were unaware of the proposal, and either declined to comment or said it was premature to discuss whether they would participate. The other three states did not immediately respond to the AP.

The proposal would extend the federal-local partnership program that President Barack Obama’s administration began scaling back in 2012 to address complaints that it promoted racial profiling.

The 287(g) program, which Trump included in his immigration executive order, gives local police, sheriff’s deputies and state troopers the authority to assist in the detection of immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally as a regular part of their law enforcement duties on the streets and in jails.

The draft memo also mentions other items included in Trump’s executive order, including the hiring of an additional 5,000 border agents, which needs financing from Congress, and his campaign promise to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

The signed order contained no mention of the possible use of state National Guard troops.

According to the draft memo, the militarization effort would be proactive, specifically empowering Guard troops to solely carry out immigration enforcement, not as an add-on the way local law enforcement is used in the program.

In addition to responding to natural or man-made disasters or for military protection of the population or critical infrastructure, state Guard forces have been used to assist with immigration-related tasks on the U.S.-Mexico border, including the construction of fences.

In the mid-2000s, President George W. Bush twice deployed Guard troops on the border to focus on non-law enforcement duties to help augment the Border Patrol as it bolstered its ranks. And in 2010, then-Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer announced a border security plan that included Guard reconnaissance, aerial patrolling and military exercises.

In July 2014, then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry ordered 1,000 National Guard troops to the border when the surge of migrant children fleeing violence in Central America overwhelmed U.S. officials responsible for their care. The Guard troops’ stated role on the border at the time was to provide extra sets of eyes but not make arrests.

Bush initiated the federal 287(g) program — named for a section of a 1996 immigration law — to allow specially trained local law enforcement officials to participate in immigration enforcement on the streets and check whether people held in local jails were in the country illegally. ICE trained and certified roughly 1,600 officers to carry out those checks from 2006 to 2015.

The memo describes the program as a “highly successful force multiplier” that identified more than 402,000 “removable aliens.”

But federal watchdogs were critical of how DHS ran the program, saying it was poorly supervised and provided insufficient training to officers, including on civil rights law. Obama phased out all the arrest power agreements in 2013 to instead focus on deporting recent border crossers and immigrants in the country illegally who posed a safety or national security threat.

Trump’s immigration strategy emerges as detentions at the nation’s southern border are down significantly from levels seen in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Last year, the arrest tally was the fifth-lowest since 1972. Deportations of people living in the U.S. illegally also increased under the Obama administration, though Republicans criticized Obama for setting prosecution guidelines that spared some groups from the threat of deportation, including those brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

Last week, ICE officers arrested more than 680 people around the country in what Kelly said were routine, targeted operations; advocates called the actions stepped-up enforcement under Trump.

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The AP National Investigative Team can be reached at investigate@ap.org

(AP) – The Trump administration is considering a proposal to mobilize as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up unauthorized immigrants, including millions living nowhere near the Mexico border, according to a draft memo obtained by The Associated Press.

The 11-page document calls for the unprecedented militarization of immigration enforcement as far north as Portland, Oregon, and as far east as New Orleans, Louisiana.

Four states that border on Mexico are included in the proposal — California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas — but it also encompasses seven states contiguous to those four — Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the AP report was “100 percent not sure” and “irresponsible.” “There is no effort at all to utilize the National Guard to round up unauthorized immigrants,” he said.

Governors in the 11 states would have a choice whether to have their guard troops participate, according to the memo, written by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general.

While National Guard personnel have been used to assist with immigration-related missions on the U.S.-Mexico border before, they have never been used as broadly or as far north.

The memo is addressed to the then-acting heads of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. It would serve as guidance to implement the wide-ranging executive order on immigration and border security that President Donald Trump signed Jan. 25. Such memos are routinely issued to supplement executive orders.

Also dated Jan. 25, the draft memo says participating troops would be authorized “to perform the functions of an immigration officer in relation to the investigation, apprehension and detention of aliens in the United States.” It describes how the troops would be activated under a revived state-federal partnership program, and states that personnel would be authorized to conduct searches and identify and arrest any unauthorized immigrants.

Requests to the White House and the Department of Homeland Security for comment and a status report on the proposal were not answered.

Related Stories

The draft document has circulated among DHS staff over the last two weeks. As recently as Friday, staffers in several different offices reported discussions were underway.

If implemented, the impact could be significant. Nearly one-half of the 11.1 million people residing in the U.S. without authorization live in the 11 states, according to Pew Research Center estimates based on 2014 Census data.

Use of National Guard troops would greatly increase the number of immigrants targeted in one of Trump’s executive orders last month, which expanded the definition of who could be considered a criminal and therefore a potential target for deportation. That order also allows immigration agents to prioritize removing anyone who has “committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense.”

Under current rules, even if the proposal is implemented, there would not be immediate mass deportations. Those with existing deportation orders could be sent back to their countries of origin without additional court proceedings. But deportation orders generally would be needed for most other unauthorized immigrants.

The troops would not be nationalized, remaining under state control.

Spokespeople for the governors of Arizona, Utah, Nevada, California, Colorado, Oklahoma, Oregon and New Mexico said they were unaware of the proposal, and either declined to comment or said it was premature to discuss whether they would participate. The other three states did not immediately respond to the AP.

The proposal would extend the federal-local partnership program that President Barack Obama’s administration began scaling back in 2012 to address complaints that it promoted racial profiling.

The 287(g) program, which Trump included in his immigration executive order, gives local police, sheriff’s deputies and state troopers the authority to assist in the detection of immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally as a regular part of their law enforcement duties on the streets and in jails.

The draft memo also mentions other items included in Trump’s executive order, including the hiring of an additional 5,000 border agents, which needs financing from Congress, and his campaign promise to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

The signed order contained no mention of the possible use of state National Guard troops.

According to the draft memo, the militarization effort would be proactive, specifically empowering Guard troops to solely carry out immigration enforcement, not as an add-on the way local law enforcement is used in the program.

In addition to responding to natural or man-made disasters or for military protection of the population or critical infrastructure, state Guard forces have been used to assist with immigration-related tasks on the U.S.-Mexico border, including the construction of fences.

In the mid-2000s, President George W. Bush twice deployed Guard troops on the border to focus on non-law enforcement duties to help augment the Border Patrol as it bolstered its ranks. And in 2010, then-Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer announced a border security plan that included Guard reconnaissance, aerial patrolling and military exercises.

In July 2014, then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry ordered 1,000 National Guard troops to the border when the surge of migrant children fleeing violence in Central America overwhelmed U.S. officials responsible for their care. The Guard troops’ stated role on the border at the time was to provide extra sets of eyes but not make arrests.

Bush initiated the federal 287(g) program — named for a section of a 1996 immigration law — to allow specially trained local law enforcement officials to participate in immigration enforcement on the streets and check whether people held in local jails were in the country illegally. ICE trained and certified roughly 1,600 officers to carry out those checks from 2006 to 2015.

The memo describes the program as a “highly successful force multiplier” that identified more than 402,000 “removable aliens.”

But federal watchdogs were critical of how DHS ran the program, saying it was poorly supervised and provided insufficient training to officers, including on civil rights law. Obama phased out all the arrest power agreements in 2013 to instead focus on deporting recent border crossers and immigrants in the country illegally who posed a safety or national security threat.

Trump’s immigration strategy emerges as detentions at the nation’s southern border are down significantly from levels seen in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Last year, the arrest tally was the fifth-lowest since 1972. Deportations of people living in the U.S. illegally also increased under the Obama administration, though Republicans criticized Obama for setting prosecution guidelines that spared some groups from the threat of deportation, including those brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

Last week, ICE officers arrested more than 680 people around the country in what Kelly said were routine, targeted operations; advocates called the actions stepped-up enforcement under Trump.

Intel Corporation on Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2017, announced plans to invest more than $7 billion to complete Fab 42. On completion, Fab 42 in Chandler, Ariz., is expected to be the most advanced semiconductor factory in the world. (Credit: Intel Corporation)

Intel chief executive Brian Krzanich met with President Donald Trump on Wednesday, where the company announced it will invest $7 billion in a factory employing up to 3,000 people.

The factory will be in Chandler, Arizona, the company said, and over 10,000 people in the Arizona area will support the factory. Krzanich confirmed to CNBC that the investment over the next three to four years would be to complete a previous plant, Fab 42, that was started and then left vacant.

The 7 nanometer chips will be produced there will be “the most powerful computer chips on the planet,” Krzanich said in the Oval Office with the Trump administration. Most Intel manufacturing happens in the U.S., Krzanich said.

Intel CEO: To invest $7B in Arizona chip factory 48 Mins Ago | 02:17

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“America has a unique combination of talent, a vibrant business environment and access to global markets, which has enabled U.S. companies like Intel to foster economic growth and innovation,” Krzanich said in a statement. “Our factories support jobs — high-wage, high-tech manufacturing jobs that are the economic engines of the states where they are located.”

It comes as the technology industry has pushed back against the Trump administration, amid mounting pressure to move manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. There will be no incentives from the federal government for the Intel project, the White House said.

The White House had said earlier that Vice President Mike Pence would speak on Wednesday with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, a member of Trump’s business advisory council, whose companies had also signed onto the brief.

WASHINGTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Intel Corporation today announced plans to invest more than $7 billion to complete Fab 42, which is expected to be the most advanced semiconductor factory in the world. The high-volume factory is in Chandler, Ariz., and is targeted to use the 7 nanometer (nm) manufacturing process. It will produce microprocessors to power data centers and hundreds of millions of smart and connected devices worldwide. The announcement was made by U.S. President Donald Trump and Intel CEO Brian Krzanich at the White House.

The completion of Fab 42 in 3 to 4 years will directly create approximately 3,000 high-tech, high-wage Intel jobs for process engineers, equipment technicians, and facilities-support engineers and technicians who will work at the site. Combined with the indirect impact on businesses that will help support the factory’s operations, Fab 42 is expected to create more than 10,000 total long-term jobs in Arizona.

Context for the investment was outlined in an e-mail from Intel’s CEO to employees.

“Intel’s business continues to grow and investment in manufacturing capacity and R&D ensures that the pace of Moore’s law continues to march on, fueling technology innovations the world loves and depends on,” said Krzanich. “This factory will help the U.S. maintain its position as the global leader in the semiconductor industry.”

“Intel is a global manufacturing and technology company, yet we think of ourselves as a leading American innovation enterprise,” Krzanich added. “America has a unique combination of talent, a vibrant business environment and access to global markets, which has enabled U.S. companies like Intel to foster economic growth and innovation. Our factories support jobs — high-wage, high-tech manufacturing jobs that are the economic engines of the states where they are located.”

Intel is America’s largest high-technology capital expenditure investor ($5.1 billion in the U.S. 2015) and its third largest investor in global R&D ($12.1 billion in 20151). The majority of Intel’s manufacturing and R&D is in the United States. As a result, Intel employs more than 50,000 people in the United States, while directly supporting almost half a million other U.S. jobs across a range of industries, including semiconductor tooling, software, logistics, channels, OEMs and other manufacturers that incorporate our products into theirs.

The 7 nm semiconductor manufacturing process targeted for Fab 42 will be the most advanced semiconductor process technology used in the world and represents the future of Moore’s Law. In 1968 Intel co-founder Gordon Moore predicted that computing power will become significantly more capable and yet cost less year after year.

Making a leading-edge computer chip is the most complex manufacturing process in the world, engineering magic that turns sand into semiconductors, the foundation of the knowledge economy.

The chips made on the 7 nm process will power the most sophisticated computers, data centers, sensors and other high-tech devices, and enable things like artificial intelligence, more advanced cars and transportation services, breakthroughs in medical research and treatment, and more. These are areas that depend upon having the highest amount of computing power, access to the fastest networks, the most data storage, the smallest chip sizes, and other benefits that come from advancing Moore’s Law.

Intel and the Intel logo, are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the United States and other countries.

At a meeting of Democratic Party activists in Phoenix on Saturday, participants discussed how to keep the supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, pictured above in May 2016. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

PHOENIX — The men and women who want to lead the Democratic National Committee agreed on a few things here Saturday. No one wanted to change the party’s progressive 2016 platform. No one wanted to enrich the consultant class. And please, please, please: With Donald Trump about to take power, no one wanted to re-fight the 2016 primary.“This is a ‘where were you?’ moment,” said Thomas Perez, the outgoing labor secretary, kicking off the party’s “future forum,” and referring to the challenge posed by a Trump presidency.

“We need to unify, no matter who we supported in the primary,” said Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), one of the highest-profile supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

“We don’t have time to re-litigate the 2016 primary,” said Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind.

The Phoenix forum, attended by 55 of the DNC’s 437 voting members, marked the official kickoff of a race that had already been roiling for two months. Ellison was endorsed right away by Sanders and by Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), with the implicit hope that he’d keep restive Sanders voters in the party. Perez, who entered the race in December, came with vocal support from swing-state governors and quiet support from the Obama administration.

What unfolded was neither a coronation nor an ideological feud. In addition to Buttigieg, who has pitched himself as the candidate of neither the “Berniecrats” or the party’s establishment, the Democratic race includes Idaho Democratic executive director Sally Boynton Brown; Ray Buckley, the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party; Jaime Harrison, South Carolina’s chairman; and Jehmu Greene, a media strategist.

None has a commanding lead; all have heard DNC members tell them that they need to read their plans and have a few more conversations.

“The media wants to treat this like a horse race [between Ellison and Perez], but Sally has more DNC member endorsements than Tom,” said Buckley.

The Phoenix forum demonstrated just how much the rival candidates overlapped, with granular pitches to DNC members about how they would help the party rebuild. Every leading candidate proposed a new version of the “50-state strategy,” deployed by former chair Howard Dean to build back party organizations in red states.

Perez, who called states like Texas and Arizona “full-employment programs” for his attorneys in the Department of Labor, promised a more robust voter-protection program that would file suits long before elections to unwind Republican-passed laws. Buckley proposed a halt to candidate-focused joint fundraising agreements in contested primaries — as 2020’s primary will be — and start monthly “victory grants” to states.

Ellison, meanwhile leaned into his support from progressives, holding a Friday night rally where endorsers portrayed him as the race’s revolutionary. Members of National Nurses United, which spent millions on the Sanders campaign, cheered as Ellison denounced the “white supremacy” of Donald Trump and talked about spending more on young voter outreach.

“You know what our budget is for College Democats? Zip, nada,” said Ellison. “Young people say, ‘we’re gonna do it our way,’ and guess what? They might teach us something new.”

While Ellison spoke, just 14 of the 55 members were listening. More were winding through candidate meetings and happy hours, getting pitched one-on-one.

Ellison’s strong identification with Sanders is also no guarantee that he could bring all of the pro-Sanders“Berniecrats” inside the party. In an interview with The Washington Post this week, Sanders said that his campaign donor list, which raised $209 million from more than 2 million people, would not automatically go to the DNC if Ellison won.

“That’s a bridge we’ll have to cross, but I am strongly supporting Keith,” Sanders said. “Everybody obviously wants the list. The people who supported me want progressive candidates. The list becomes corrupted, in a sense, if you start supporting candidates who are not progressive and not willing to take on the establishment.”

David Weigel is a national political correspondent covering the 2016 election and ideological movements.

A far-left Democratic activist and Fox News analyst Jehmu Greene has become the seventh person to enter the race for chair of the Democratic National Committee.

“After an historic year and devastating losses up and down the ballot, it is women who are stepping up to protect the rights and freedom of every American,” Greene wrote on her campaign website. She noted on her site that she is the child of illegal immigrants from Liberia and owes it to the Democratic Party for her rise in politics.

“We are organizing, taking action, and marching to demonstrate our opposition to the next administration’s hurtful, hateful policies,” she added, taking aim at President-elect Donald Trump. “It is critical that the debate over the future of the Democratic Party reflects this energy — transforming the party and the country cannot be done without us,” Greene wrote.

She added, “Like so many women across the country, I am stepping up and putting myself out there. I am running for DNC chair.”

Greene’s announcement arrived two days before her planned appearance at an event in Phoenix, Arizona Sunday where she will appear with fellow Democrats for the first of four planned “DNC Future Forum” meetings.

The other candidates are Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN); Secretary of Labor Tom Perez; Raymond Buckley, chairman of New Hampshire Democrats; Jaime Harrison, chairman of the South Carolina Democrats; Peter Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana; and Sally Boyton Brown, executive director of the Idaho Democrats.

Ellison, who has received the endorsement of National Nurses United, is arguably the most controversial candidate in the DNC race for his history of support for the very unorthodox anti-Israel leader of Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has recently reversed course on Ellison and announced that they oppose him for DNC chair after they were forced to address an audio from 2010. On the audio, the left-wing congressman said that Israel controlled the U.S. government.

However, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) — who is himself Jewish — is sticking with Ellison. He is joined by several other left-wing Jews, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who also endorsed Ellison’s candidacy, in spite of his support for Islam.

Several prominent Democratic leaders expressed that “they are upset with Schumer for backing Ellison, who has been highly critical of Israel,” according to CBS2.

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Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton faces a striking choice in the final three weeks of the campaign: to expand her efforts to states that Democrats haven’t won in a generation, or to stay a current course that, if conditions hold, would deliver her a resounding electoral college victory.

After two tumultuous weeks focused on Donald Trump’s behavior toward women, Clinton is ahead in nearly all of the key battleground states where her campaign has directed the most resources, according to many recent polls. But some once-solidly Republican states — notably Arizona, Georgia and Utah — now also appear to be in play.

Clinton aides said they see advantages to running up the score in the electoral college, where 270 votes wins the White House. Victories in unexpected places could boost that total, handing her more of a mandate come January and decreasing the potency of Trump’s complaints of a “rigged” election.

But victories in core battleground states such as Pennsylvania and New Hampshire would almost assuredly cut off Trump’s path as well. Those states are also home to key down-ballot races that will determine control of the Senate, an important factor in how much support Clinton would have while launching an agenda in January.

“It’s true more and more states are emerging as truly competitive,” Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said. “We are closely following the situations in those states even as we refuse to take anything for granted in the core battlegrounds, which also happen to be the sites of some of the biggest Senate races.”

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The issue is predominantly about resources. Clinton and the Democratic Party entered October with twice as much money in the bank as Trump and the Republicans, but some in Clinton’s camp have cautioned against any late moves that could jeopardize a victory in states she appears to have nailed down.

“We’ve got to get our win,” said a senior Clinton aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the campaign’s strategy. “We have to make sure we focus on keeping the pressure on and doing the things we need to build up as many electoral votes as we can.”

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The campaign is expected to decide in the coming days whether to make a more aggressive play for states such as Georgia, which is being eyed as one of the more promising opportunities for Clinton, and Arizona, where a couple of high-profile surrogates are being deployed this week: Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) on Tuesday and Chelsea Clinton on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is not willing to concede publicly that any states on the map are lost, maintaining that Clinton’s low favorability ratings and Trump’s anti-establishment message will push undecided voters and independents to break for Trump in the final leg of the campaign.

“We’re seeing a much more competitive contest than you’re analyzing them to be. We’re still playing a very active role in these states and obviously making as big of a play as possible,” said Trump spokesman Jason Miller. “There isn’t anything that’s not a priority. We don’t want to isolate it and say, everything comes down to these states.”

Conway said there may be a need to reallocate resources in the remaining weeks, but she noted that it’s “a little premature” to announce when or where that might happen.

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“There’s no shame in saying we’re going to reallocate our resources, dollars, personnel, data operation, ground game, candidate time, both [Indiana Gov. Mike] Pence’s and Trump’s time, in places where we’re more competitive,” she said.

The shifting poll numbers come amid the nastiest stretch of this year’s campaign, in which a videotape emerged showing Trump bragging in lewd terms about forcing himself on women sexually. Following the video’s publication in The Washington Post on Oct. 7, multiple women have accused Trump of kissing or groping them without their consent.

[The growing list of women who have stepped forward to accuse Trump of touching them inappropriately]

Both Trump and his running mate, Pence, have hinted that they recognize the shift. Trump has stepped up his disparagement of a “rigged” election at campaign stops across the country and on social media, urging his supporters to monitor polling places closely on Nov. 8.On Sunday, Trump noted on Twitter that there are national polls showing him within striking distance of Clinton despite the intense media focus on the accusations against him.

“Polls close, but can you believe I lost large numbers of women voters based on made up events THAT NEVER HAPPENED. Media rigging election!” Trump tweeted.

Pence sought to play down Trump’s rhetoric, saying, “We will absolutely accept the result of the election,” during an appearance Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” But he also appeared to embrace, at least partly, the notion of a “rigged” election.

“The American people are tired of the obvious bias in the national media,”Pence said. “That’s where the sense of a rigged election goes here.”

Even as some polls have shown Clinton with only a modest lead nationally — one published Sunday by The Washington Post had her up four points over Trump — her advantage on the electoral map appears sizable.

One such tally, maintained by The Post’s blog The Fix, projects that Clinton would win 341 electoral votes to Trump’s 197 if the election were held today.

Several states that Trump initially sought to contest, including Colorado and Virginia, have now seemingly slipped out of reach. Clinton was up by 15 points in Virginia, according to a poll released Sunday by the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University. And Trump has pulled resources from Virginia.

Trump’s failure to perform in such states, Clinton aides said, will allow her campaign to shift attention even more to North Carolina and Florida — two must-win states for Trump — to choke his path to 270 electoral votes.

Clinton is running television ads tailored to seven states: Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio and Iowa. Because they cost millions of dollars to sustain, such ad purchases are the clearest clue about which states are a campaign’s top priority.

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With “smart” technology, cities will be able to address infrastructure challenges, food and water shortages, and constrained budgets.

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The vast majority of Clinton’s campaign appearances and those of her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, have been concentrated in those states, and most of the high-profile surrogates dispatched by the campaign have focused their efforts there as well.

Trump’s campaign now appears intent on remaining competitive in four battleground states: Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

He has maintained a far busier travel schedule than Clinton, hitting all four of those states last week, as well as New Hampshire and Maine. Trump appeared in Florida on three consecutive days last week, underscoring how crucial the state is to his strategy.

Trump will spend the early part of this week in Wisconsin and Colorado before heading to Nevada for Wednesday’s debate. His campaign operations in key battlegrounds continue to suffer from ongoing tensions with both state and national GOP establishments and a dearth of on-the-ground investments.

Last week, the campaign fired Trump’s state co-chairman in Virginia, Corey Stewart, after he took part in a protest against the Republican National Committee.

In Ohio, where Trump has fallen behind in the polls, the campaign severed ties with Matt Borges, the chairman of the state Republican Party. In a scathing letter, Trump’s Ohio state director, Robert Paduchik, accused Borges of going on a “self-promotional media tour with state and national outlets to criticize our party’s nominee.”

While the Clinton campaign has begun exploring new opportunities, it has also redoubled its efforts in some of its strongest states. The campaign increased investments recently in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Nevada, according to a Democrat who was familiar with the strategy but was not authorized to speak publicly.

The planned visits to Arizona this week by Sanders and Chelsea Clinton, meanwhile, mark what some Democrats see as a longer-term shift in the state’s electoral politics.

Only one Democrat — Bill Clinton — has carried Arizona since 1948. Bill Clinton lost the state in 1992 but narrowly prevailed in 1996.

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Alexis Tameron, the state’s Democratic party chairwoman, said the demographics of the state are trending in the right direction for Democrats, and the state’s voting patterns could resemble Colorado within a few cycles.

Even as it weighs whether to invest heavily in new states, the Clinton campaign is increasingly reaching out to voters in those places through local media, an effort to maintain a presence without reallocating resources to the state.

Kaine spoke to a Salt Lake City television station remotely from New York on Thursday, relaying that the Clinton campaign wants to step up its focus on the state, which Democrats have not won since 1964.

“Hopefully we’ll even have candidates or spouses or high-profile surrogates visit,” Kaine told KTVX. “We’re 3 1/2 weeks out in a state that we didn’t think was in play. Now it is.”

In Georgia, where the last Democrat to carry the state was Bill Clinton in 1992, there’s a clear sense that the contest is more meaningful than in recent cycles, said Michael Smith, communications director for the Georgia Democratic Party.

“Instead of using Georgia to mobilize people to go to North Carolina, they’re staying in our state. It’s night and day,” Smith said.

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Democrats are running coordinated campaigns in the battleground states, meaning money is being to spent to promote the entire ticket, not just Clinton.

That stands to benefit Democratic Senate candidates, including Katie McGinty in Pennsylvania, Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire, Deborah Ross in North Carolina and Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada — all of whom are in competitive races.

Priorities USA Action, the pro-Clinton super PAC, is considering devoting television air time to Senate races in four states: Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, according to a person familiar with the discussions. A decision is expected to be made by the middle of the week.

In an effort to help down-ballot candidates across the country, Clinton and her surrogates, especially President Obama, have stepped up their case against Republicans in general, seeking to steer voters away from giving congressional candidates a pass for “enabling” Trump.

“I mean, I know some of them now are walking away, but why did it take you this long?” Obama said at a campaign stop for Clinton in Cleveland on Friday.

U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies are investigating what they see as a broad covert Russian operation in the United States to sow public distrust in the upcoming presidential election and in U.S. political institutions, intelligence and congressional officials said.The aim is to understand the scope and intent of the Russian campaign, which incorporates ­cyber-tools to hack systems used in the political process, enhancing Russia’s ability to spread disinformation.

The effort to better understand Russia’s covert influence operations is being coordinated by James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence. “This is something of concern for the DNI,” said Charles Allen, a former longtime CIA officer who has been briefed on some of these issues. “It is being addressed.”

A Russian influence operation in the United States “is something we’re looking very closely at,” said one senior intelligence official who, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. Officials also are examining potential disruptions to the election process, and the FBI has alerted state and local officials to potential cyberthreats.

The official cautioned that the intelligence community is not saying it has “definitive proof” of such tampering, or any Russian plans to do so. “But even the hint of something impacting the security of our election system would be of significant concern,” the official said. “It’s the key to our democracy, that people have confidence in the election system.”

The Kremlin’s intent may not be to sway the election in one direction or another, officials said, but to cause chaos and provide propaganda fodder to attack U.S. democracy-building policies around the world, particularly in the countries of the former Soviet Union.

U.S. intelligence officials described the covert influence campaign here as “ambitious” and said it is also designed to counter U.S. leadership and influence in international affairs.

Their comments came just before President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin talked privately about cyberspying and other matters on the sidelines of the Group of 20 talks in China. After their meeting Monday, Obama acknowledged tensions over digital espionage and said the United States had strong capability in this area. “Our goal is not to suddenly, in the cyber arena, duplicate the cycle of escalation we saw when it comes to other arms races in the past,” Obama said.

One congressional official, who has been briefed recently on the matter, said “Russian ‘active measures’ or covert influence or ma­nipu­la­tion efforts, whether it’s in Eastern Europe or in the United States,” are worrisome.

It “seems to be a global campaign,” the aide said. As a result, the issue has “moved up as a priority” for the intelligence agencies, which include the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security as well as the CIA and the National Security Agency.

Some congressional leaders briefed recently by the intelligence agencies on Russian influence operations in Europe, and how they may serve as a template for activities in the United States, were disturbed by what they heard.

After Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) ended a secure 30-minute phone briefing given by a top intelligence official recently, he was “deeply shaken,” according to an aide who was with Reid when he left the secure room at the FBI’s Las Vegas office.

The Russian government hack of the Democratic National Committee, disclosed by the DNC in June but not yet officially ascribed by the U.S. government to Russia, and the subsequent release of 20,000 hacked DNC emails by WikiLeaks, shocked officials. Cyber analysts traced its digital markings to known Russian government hacking groups.

“We’ve seen an unprecedented intrusion and an attempt to influence or disrupt our political process,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, speaking about the DNC hack and the WikiLeaks release on the eve of the Democratic convention. The disclosures, which included a number of embarrassing internal emails, forced the resignation of DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Members of both parties are urging the president to take the Russians to task publicly.

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) in a statement urged Obama to publicly name Russia as responsible for the DNC hack and apparent meddling in the electoral process. “Free and legitimate elections are non-negotiable. It’s clear that Russia thinks the reward outweighs any consequences,” he wrote. “That calculation must be changed. . . . This is going to take a cross-domain response — diplomatic, political and economic — that turns the screws on Putin and his cronies.”

Another Republican, Sen. Daniel Coats of Indiana, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Sunday that if Moscow is indeed trying to influence the U.S. election, “such actions would be an outrageous violation of international rules of behavior and cannot be tolerated.”

Administration officials said they are still weighing their response.

Russia has denied that it carried out any cyber-intrusions in the United States. Putin called the accusationsagainst Russia by U.S. officials and politicians an attempt to “distract the public’s attention.”

“It doesn’t really matter who hacked this data from Mrs. Clinton’s campaign headquarters,” Putin said in an interview with Bloomberg News, referring to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. “The important thing is the content was given to the public.”

The Department of Homeland Security has offered local and state election officials help to prevent or deal with Election Day cyber disruptions, including vulnerability scans, regular actionable information and alerts, and access to other tools for improving cybersecurity at the local level. It will also have a cyber team ready at the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center to alert jurisdictions if attacks are detected.

Last month, the FBI issued an unprecedented warning to state election officials urging them to be on the lookout for intrusions into their election systems and to take steps to upgrade security measures across the voting process, including voter registration, voter rolls and election-related websites. The confidential “flash” alert said investigators had detected attempts to penetrate election systems in several states.

Arizona, Illinois and both the Democratic and Republican parties, as well as the DNC, have been the victims of either attempted or successful cyberattacks that FBI agents with expertise in Russian government hacking are investigating.

PARIS (AFP) – An experimental drug cleared protein buildup in the brains of people with mild Alzheimer’s disease and slowed their mental decline, the results of a preliminary trial showed Wednesday.

The outcome raised hopes that a treatment may finally be within reach for the memory- and independence-robbing disease, but experts cautioned against overplaying the findings.

The drug, aducanumab, is only the latest antibody to show promise in an early, Phase I drug trial, they said. Others ended up disappointing in the decisive Phase III efficacy test.

“Although potentially this is an exciting story, it is important to temper any excitement with considerable caution,” said Robert Howard, a professor of old age psychiatry at University College London.

“It would be premature to conclude that this is likely to represent an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.”

Researchers in the United States and Switzerland tested aducanumab, developed by biotech firm Biogen, on 165 people with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease for a period of one year.

Some were given a monthly injection of the antibody, and others a placebo or dummy drug.

In the brains of those given the treatment, there was an “almost complete clearance” of so-called amyloid plaques, the researchers reported.

Amyloids are sticky proteins that clump together in deposits — one of the mechanisms suspected of causing Alzheimer’s.

“The effect of the antibody is very impressive,” said Roger Nitsch, a professor at the University of Zurich’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine, who co-authored the study.

– ‘Now is the time’ –

After one year of treatment, “practically no beta-amyloid plaques could be detected in patients who received the highest dose,” said a university statement.

And while the trial was not designed to test drug efficacy, the team did observe slower onset of symptoms in treated patients.

This supported the hypothesis that amyloid plaques are indeed what cause Alzheimer’s, the researchers said, but further tests are required to prove this once and for all.

“Indeed, confirmation that anti-AB (amyloid-beta) treatment slows cognitive decline would be a game-changer for how we understand, treat and prevent Alzheimer’s disease,” commented Eric Reiman at the Banner Alzheimer’s Institute in Phoenix, Arizona.

“Now is the time to find out.”

The drug did have side-effects, however, including fluid buildup on the brain, and headaches.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, which the World Health Organisation (WHO) says affects nearly 50 million people worldwide — with some 7.7 million new cases diagnosed per year.

Old age is the major risk factor, and there is no prevention or effective treatment for Alzheimer’s symptoms, which include memory loss and disorientation, as well as anxiety and aggressive behaviour.

Like actor Gene Wilder, who passed away on Monday, people do not die of Alzheimer’s itself but complications which can include infections or malnutrition.

Last year, drug-maker Eli Lilly said the drug solanezumab, also an antibody, showed promise when given to people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.

Results from further testing with both drugs will be hotly anticipated in the months to come.

Outside experts expressed cautious optimism about the new study, published in the journal Nature.

“Let’s keep our fingers crossed for success in the next steps,” said neuroscience professor Richard Morris from the University of Edinburgh.

The FBI has found that hackers accessed Arizona’s and Illinois’s state election databases, CBS News has confirmed.

The bureau issued an alert to state election officials of the attempted hacks, which was sent earlier this month and it referenced two attacks in two states that are under investigation. At least one site was compromised, CBS News confirmed.

The two states that were targeted were Arizona and Illinois, and while the FBI released a statement, it didn’t offer any details.

“The FBI routinely advises private industry of various cyber threat indicators observed during the course of our investigations. This data is provided in order to help systems administrators guard against the actions of persistent cyber criminals.”

The intrusions were first reported by Yahoo News on Monday after it obtained a copy of the alert. Yahoo said foreign hackers are responsible.

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According to its report, earlier this month, the FBI’s Cyber Division issued an alert that warned: “Targeting Activity Against State Board of Election Systems. The alert said that the FBI was investigating the intrusions into two states’ election websites whereby one resulted in the “exfiltration” or theft of voter registration data.

Only three days earlier, on Aug. 15, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson held a conference call with state election officials offering to help make states’ voting systems more secure, the report said. Johnson also said that DHS was not aware of “specific or credible cybersecurity threats” to the election.

The alert, Yahoo’s report said, didn’t identify the states that were targeted, but sources told Yahoo that they were Arizona and Illinois. While the Arizona incident appears to be limited, Ilinois’s Board of Elections general counsel Ken Menzel told Yahoo that Illinois had to shut its system down for 10 days in late July and that personal data for up to 200,000 voters had been downloaded.

Menzel told Yahoo that FBI agents confirmed that the people behind the intrusions were foreign hackers, but the bureau didn’t name the country or countries involved. He also told Yahoo that he heard the FBI was seeing whether a “possible link” existed between these attempted hacks and those at the Democratic National Committee and other political groups.

An FBI “Flash” memorandum on state Board of Elections site warns of attacks on two states so far and asks for other states to check their logs.

Someone using servers in the US, England, Scotland, and the Netherlands stole voter registration from one state’s Board of Elections website in June and attacked another state’s elections website in August, according to a restricted “Flash” memorandum sent out by the FBI’s Cyber Division. The bureau issued the alert requesting other states check for signs of the same intrusion.

While saying the Department of Homeland Security was unaware of any specific threat to election systems, Johnson offered states assistance from the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) “to conduct vulnerability scans, provide actionable information and access to other tools and resources for improving cybersecurity,” a DHS spokesperson said, describing the conference call. “The Election Assistance Commission, NIST, and DOJ are available to offer support and assistance in protecting against cyber attacks.”

The successful hack of the Illinois system began with a scan of the state election board’s site withAcunetix, a commercial vulnerability scanning tool used to discover SQL injection vulnerabilities and other site weaknesses. The attacker used information on an SQL injection bug to then useSqlMap, an open source tool, to access user credentials and data, and the DirBuster tool to discover hidden files and directories on the Web server. Yahoo reports that officials suspected “foreign hackers” for the attack.

Ars attempted to contact Acunetix for comment, but received no response.

The IP addresses listed as sources for the attacks are associated with commercial dedicated and virtual private server hosting companies: US and UK servers provided by King Servers LTD;Fortunix Networks LP, a custom hosting company with servers in Edinburgh; and Liteserver in Tilburg, the Netherlands. The use of virtual private servers (likely purchased with WebMoney, bitcoin, or some other anonymous currency) and off-the-shelf tools doesn’t suggest any significant amount of sophistication on the part of the attackers. But state government sites like those affected so far are typically not hardened against attack, so sophistication wouldn’t necessarily be required.

In this Wednesday, June 13, 2012 photo, a boy rolls a bicycle tire up a ramp near a camp for people displaced by the 2010 earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Amid the horrors of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake lay a promise of renewal. With the United States taking the lead, international donors pledged billions of dollars to help it “build back better,” breaking its cycle of dependency. Yet 2 1/2 years later, the fruits of an ambitious $1.8 billion program of pledged donations is way behind in making collections.

GOP nominee would need to sweep four key battlegrounds where he now trails Hillary Clinton in polls

A barn displays a Donald Trump banner in Johnstown, Pa., a battleground state the Republican nominee likely must win if he is to be elected president in November.PHOTO: MARK MAKELA/GETTY IMAGES

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By LAURA MECKLER
The Wall Street Journal

Updated Aug. 23, 2016 9:21 p.m. ET

As the traditional Labor Day kickoff of the fall presidential race approaches, Republican Donald Trump faces an increasingly narrow path to the White House.

A Trump victory over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton likely would require a sweep of a set of battleground states where he is competitive but trailing in recent opinion polls—Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina—and both campaigns describe them as the heart of the race. Mrs. Clinton, by contrast, could win with just one of them, partly because Democrats start with a larger number of states that historically side with them.

Both campaigns have put their money and their time in those states, despite suggestions they might turn elsewhere. Mr. Trump has traveled to those states more than others and has paid advertising in only these four states. Of the 20 media markets that have received the greatest number of ad spots placed by either the Clinton campaign or its main super PAC, 16 are in one of them, according to data from an ad tracker not affiliated with either campaign.

“It just becomes very hard and difficult to understand how the Trump campaign gets to 270” Electoral College votes needed to win, said Russ Schriefer, a strategist for Republican Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign. Compared with that election, “the map has shifted and is much more favorable to the Democrats.”

Mr. Trump still has about 11 weeks to Election Day, and races tend to tighten toward the end. There is also enough time for unexpected revelations to alter the campaign’s trajectory. But polls show Mrs. Clinton has momentum.

Both her campaign and Priorities USA, a super PAC backing her, have pulled ads from Colorado and Virginia. They were battlegrounds in the last two campaigns, having voted Republican as recently as 2004 and in most elections in the decades prior.
But demographic changes favor the Democrats, and polling shows Mrs. Clinton with solid leads in both states.

If Mrs. Clinton carries those states and wins Pennsylvania, she could withstand losses in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and many other swing states—assuming she holds the traditionally Democratic states. She also likely would win with a victory in Ohio or Florida, even without the Keystone State, a sign of her strong position. But Pennsylvania, with its long history favoring Democrats, may offer her the easiest path forward.

“Pennsylvania is key to the entire race” as a must-win state for Mr. Trump, said Mitch Stewart, who was battleground states director for Mr. Obama’s 2012 re-election. For Mrs. Clinton, Pennsylvania likely would be the “tipping point’’—the state that puts a candidate over 270 electoral votes when states are listed in order of the winner’s most-likely victories, he said.

Florida and Ohio, big states with large shares of electoral votes, long have been presidential battlegrounds, but demographic changes have made North Carolina, long a Republican stronghold, more favorable to Democrats. Then-Sen. Barack Obama won the state in 2008, though not in 2012.

While Mr. Trump’s first round of television advertising is restricted to four states, the Clinton campaign is airing ads in those states as well as in New Hampshire, Iowa and Nevada, three other swing states. It also is on the air in Omaha, hoping to pick off one electoral vote available in Nebraska, which allocates its share in part by congressional district.

Those decisions show the campaigns’ true priorities, amid predictions from Mr. Trump that he would win a string of Democratic-leaning states such as Minnesota, which hasn’t backed a Republican for president since 1972.

For her part, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign has funneled money for field organizers to Georgia and Arizona, where polling, unlike in Minnesota, shows tight races. On Tuesday, the Clinton campaign was scheduled to open a campaign office in Utah, which last voted Democratic in 1964.

Democrats say they don’t expect to necessarily win states beyond the core battlegrounds. But they hope the moves will entice the Trump campaign to shift money from top-priority contests into these traditionally Republican states.

Mr. Trump’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment. A Republican strategist close to the Trump campaign suggested the GOP nominee might want to spend some of his time and money in these traditionally Republican states. He cited the volatile immigration issue as having an unpredictable impact on Arizona and said it might be necessary to work on voter mobilization in Georgia.

Retaining Arizona, Georgia and Utah is essential for Mr. Trump, but for Mrs. Clinton, victory there likely would be Electoral College gravy. So, the Clinton campaign is focused on winning the states most likely to put her over the top, starting with Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio and North Carolina, said Marlon Marshall, Mrs. Clinton’s director of state campaigns and political engagement.

“Those are states that will be crucial to getting us to 270 electoral votes,” he said. “Our goal is what’s the most efficient way to get to 270, and how do we open up as many pathways as possible.”

To deny Mrs. Clinton a victory in Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump is courting white, working-class voters outside the big cities. Democrats are relying on suburban voters, particularly women who might otherwise vote Republican. The Real Clear Politics average of public polls has Mrs. Clinton with a nine percentage point lead in the state.

Heading into the 2016 election, Democrats enjoyed a built-in advantage in the Electoral College. In every election since 1992, Democrats have won a set of 18 states, plus the District of Columbia, that add up to 242 Electoral College votes. Republicans have consistently held 13 states with 102 electoral votes.

Mr. Schriefer, the GOP strategist, said that given current polling, the challenge for Mr. Trump is to increase his popularity with broad swaths of the electorate, not to turn things around in any particular state.

He recalled many past GOP nominees, including Mr. Romney, who made late-in-the-game plays for Pennsylvania, only to see Democrats hold the state. “Pennsylvania for Republicans is always a little bit like Charlie Brown and the football. It gets pulled away from us at the last minute,” he said.

The Republican strategist close to the Trump campaign said the GOP nominee has some additional options, predicting that his message would resonate in places where there is economic anxiety, such as the traditionally Democratic states of Michigan and Wisconsin. Victories there would give Mr. Trump more options for assembling states for an Electoral College majority, but public polling shows Mrs. Clinton well ahead in both places. The Clinton campaign has sent field organizers to both states but so far hasn’t spent any money on TV ads for either place.

Donald Trump was in New Mexico yesterday enjoying himself and creating the sort of havoc that generally only does him good. Anti-Trump protestors smashed a door and threw rocks while attacking his rally at Albuquerque’s convention center. The violence, along with the fact that some of the protesters reportedly waved Mexican flags, created the same sense of America under siege that feeds the anxiety of Trump supporters as well as makes the candidate’s case about the need for tougher immigration policies. Far from hurting him, such scenes help him enormously. Meanwhile, Trump was giving the sort of trademark speech that delights his followers and infuriates foes, in which he mocked Hillary Clinton’s speaking style and called Senator Elizabeth Warren (who has become one of the Democrats’ leading anti-Trump surrogates lately) “Pocahontas.”

It was all typical Trump bluster and anyone who thinks his no-holds-barred style doesn’t help more than it hurts his cause hasn’t been paying attention to events in the last several months. But there was one particular target of his ire that is worthy of special attention: New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez. The governor is one of the holdouts among Republican officeholders who have not yet endorsed their party’s presumptive presidential nominee. But while Trump has toned down his act recently in an attempt to woo some other leading GOP members of the House and Senate that have opposed him just as much as the governor — in particular, House Speaker Paul Ryan — he isn’t playing nice with Martinez. He used his speech to attack her for “not doing the job.” Up until now, Trump’s scorched earth tactics have worked against all his Republican opponents. But now that the nomination is locked up, his decision to try to bully rather than woo Martinez raises questions that speak to his weaknesses heading into the general election, as well as to the future of a GOP that may, win or lose in November, be dominated by Trump.

Trump’s attack on Martinez was a typical Donald misdirection play. Though he tells Republicans he’s a conservative, he often attacks opponents from the left and that’s what happened here. By accusing her of being responsible for the state’s economic problems and an increase in food stamps, he was reading from the Democratic playbook. New Mexico liberals have been frustrated by the two-term governor’s popularity as well as her insistence on governing like a conservative. So for Trump to use these sorts of talking points — as well as blaming her for federal decisions to settle some Syrian refugees in her state — against the chair of the Republican Governors Association and a person who has kept the GOP alive in a state that is increasingly trending blue is an interesting choice.

Of course, since he’s already won the nomination, he didn’t have to attack Martinez at all. But rather than sending an olive branch to the governor or just ignoring her, he gave Martinez the same treatment he previously dished out to competitors like Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz.

Why did he do it? As we’ve seen in the last several weeks after it became clear that he would be the nominee, Trump has no plans to undergo a personality transplant. Acting presidential is too boring for him, not to mention the fact that his boorish behavior has helped rather than hurt his cause. But creating the party unity that is necessary if he’s going to have a chance of winning the general election requires a degree of diplomacy. Trump is smart enough to know that in order to get unity he can’t bully everyone, and that seems to be his strategy with Ryan. But with Martinez, a Hispanic, and one of the GOP’s most prominent women, he doesn’t seem to think he needs to behave the same way.

The message here is unmistakable and one that seems to be a not-so-subtle signal to his core supporters as well as to opponents. This isn’t so much a dog whistle as it is a neon sign flashing a message that tells both Hispanics and women that the Trump train is more interested in running them over than in getting them to hop on board. Trump’s apologists can talk until they are blue in the face on cable news networks about what a great guy he is and how well he treats Hispanics and women in his employ. But it appears that, when it comes to getting a Republican who is a Hispanic woman to endorse him, he has reverted to his trademark bullying rather than diplomacy.

In Martinez’s case, it’s unlikely to work. An endorsement of Trump in a state where the Hispanic vote is so important isn’t going to help her win a third term in 2018. Perhaps that’s why Trump isn’t bothering even to try to make peace with her. But like a lot of what has worked for Trump in this election cycle, it leads to questions about the impact his tactics might have on the future of the Republican Party.

Trump’s key to victory this year clearly lies in rallying a record number of white males to the polls that haven’t voted before. Whether the millions of angry and fearful white males he needs to materialize in November actually exist or are merely a figment of the imagination of conservatives who wrongly blamed President Obama’s 2012 re-election on the lack of conservative enthusiasm for Mitt Romney has yet to be proven. But the idea that Republicans can write off both the growing Hispanic vote as well as women is a curious formula for electoral success.

Martinez was given a prime speaking spot at the 2012 Republican convention because it was understood she was a model of how they could expand the reach of the party. But in Donald Trump’s GOP, she has become a heretic who must be destroyed.

Given the current polls, one can’t dismiss the possibility that Trump can win even without Hispanic support or while losing the female vote by the sort of margin that would have heretofore be considered a guarantee of defeat. But a Republican Party where a Susana Martinez becomes a persona non-grata is not one that can win elections in the long run. By attacking her in this manner, Trump may get cheers from his core supporters but he is also ensuring a bleak future for the party that he and his backers have hijacked.

Charles Krauthammer said on the Fox News Channels “Special Report” on May 25, 2016, “Trump wanted revenge because New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez didn’t endorse him and skipped his rally. And he exacted it.”